Jonathan Rosenbaum

Until recently, it has appeared that the Library of America has completely embraced the contemporary gentrification of “trashy” crime fiction to the highest ranks of literary canonization while it has almost as completely rejected the premise of according this same treatment, or anything that even distantly approaches it, to science fiction or western fiction. (I’ve already posted a little bit about this issue, last month.) But now that Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. have recently entered LOA’s Hall of Fame, I wonder how unreasonable it might be to hope that, say, Ray Bradbury (see below), Fredric Brown, Robert Heinlein, Henry Kuttner and/or C.L. Moore (see below), and Theodore Sturgeon (see below), among others, might be among the next in line for consideration. (I wouldn’t presume to list any candidates for canonizing western fiction.)

There will always be differences and disputes regarding LOA’s choices, of course. And the fact that I prefer Philip K. Dick’s Pi in the Sky to most of the 13 other Dick novels selected by Jonathan Letham for LOA, or that I value Charles Willeford’s four Hoke Moseley novels of the 1980s as literature far more than his second novel, Pick-up (1955), doesn’t factor in various other considerations, such as editor Robert Polito selecting Pick-up as one of the five novels included in LOA’s American Noir of the 1950s volume, whereas there isn’t an American Noir of the 1980s volume edited by anyone. Read more

It’s more than a little unnerving to discover that the “canonized” Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. collection that Library of America is bringing out on June 11 excludes my favorite work of his — his mind-boggling second novel (1959), The Sirens of Titan, by all counts his wittiest and most profound — as well as Mother Night (his third, 1961), another major work.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that Library of America is planing one or more other Vonnegut volumes, thus theoretically making room for the first three novels (Piano Player in 1952 was his debut effort) as well as more of the late and relatively weak ones, along with his play, Happy Birthday, Wanda June, and other stories. But the weird thing about LOA’s canonizing is that it creates contestable and uncomfortable groupings, even when they’re simply chronological; for me, Cat’s Cradle (1963) belongs squarely with the two novels preceding it, not with the three that came afterwards. This isn’t quite as grotesque as collecting William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury in the same volume as his Soldier’s Pay, Mosquitoes, and Flags in the Dust (the longer version of Sartoris), which the Library of America also did, but it’s still bothersome. Read more

“The government fails the people of New Orleans when they are hit by a hurricane, fails to notice the cadmium paint in the marketplace, does a lousy job educating our kids, can’t keep the libraries open or the park lawns mowed, overlooks the catastrophic shortcuts taken by its pals in the oil-drilling industry — and all we can do to express sour frustration is elect candidates who promise to hack it down even more.”

–“Servile Disobedience,” Harper’s magazine, February 2011, p. 7 [1/23/2011] Read more

They call it their “Self-Improvement” issue, and while flying today from Richmond to Chicago, I read three especially good articles about the sorry state of our nation, each one a pretty good substitute for the sort of news and editorials that we’re no longer getting. Here are teasers from each one:

From “Revolt of the Elites” (unsigned) in The Intellectual Situation (p. 15):

“Who…is guility of elitism, if not the elitely educated in general? The main culprits turn out to be people for whom a monied and therefore educated background lies behind the adoption of aesthetic, intellectual, or political values that demur from the money-making mandate that otherwise dominates society.”

From “Caucasian Nation” by Marco Roth in Politics (p. 14):

“The robust case for dominating other people sounds awful to most American ears today. So the contemporary idea of ethnocracy relies instead on an opposite rhetoric of victimization. The simple-minded mantra we’re taught in grade school goes like this: blacks good because oppressed, whites bad because oppressors. So if whites suddenly became oppressed, even while remaining the majority, they would magically become good again. Many Americans are now being taught to think this way.”

From “The Two Cultures of Life” by Kristin Dombek in Essays (p. Read more

Why did I book a ticket to this solo concert long in advance, even though I have yet to shell out for Paris/ London: Testament, the three-disc album he released last October, which the concert was meant to promote? I guess it’s basically a matter of not getting too many chances lately to see Jarrett live — meaning that I’m even willing to put up with an evening of his playing that’s mainly devoted to his relatively dull and uninspiring impromptu originals.

There’s always been a certain solipsistic side to some of Jarrett’s predilections as a performer. If memory serves, the last time I saw him live was at a Left Bank cave in Paris called La caméléon circa the early 70s, less than a block from my flat, and I can still remember how infuriated I was when he insisted on playing the flute — not especially well — during a large portion of his set. His stabs at performing classical music, no matter how “competent,” often seem comparably misguided.  Similarly, when he chooses to go “free-form” nowadays and play some version of what used to be regarded as avant-garde jazz, I’d much rather hear Cecil Taylor than Jarrett’s much inferior version of that style. Read more

Just because it isn’t available online doesn’t mean that Dudley Andrews’ interview with the great Jia Zhangke in the Summer 2009 issue of Film Quarterly isn’t the most aesthetically and politically eye-opening piece I’ve read so far anywhere about this filmmaker. And the fact that 24 City is on the cover, also illustrating James Naremore’s second annual ten-best piece for this magazine (which isn’t online either), should serve as a further incentive. [7/05/09] Read more

Put your cursor over each of the first three volumes. [5/30/09] Read more

Recommended Reading: “Long Shot” by Evan Osnos. in the May 11, 2009 issue of The New Yorker. Not so much for critical insights into the films as for biographical information that one wouldn’t likely come across elsewhere, at least in English. [5/11/09]

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Go here.

In Time magazine, no less. And it’s nice to see Hendrik Hertzberg linking and endorsing this argument. Let’s see if we can create a groundswell.

P.S. I stole the photo of Klein from Russ Limbaugh. Thanks for the help, man. [4/4/08] Read more

It’s very good to have a selection of J. Hoberman’s film criticism finally available in French translation, so Emmanuel Burdeau should be commended for bringing out a French edition of Hoberman’s most recent (2003) collection, moderately priced at 14 Euros and translated by Marie Mathilde Burdeau, in his film book series published by Capricci (which has also published the wonderful Les Aventures de Harry Dickson —one of the first things I wrote about on this website). The only thing that gives me pause is that only 16 of Hoberman’s articles have been included in the French edition, leaving roughly 50 other pieces in the same book untranslated and unacknowledged in any way. (More precisely, this French edition includes only 14 of the 66 separate items in the original, though it adds two others.) This must be a reflection of the ongoing recession on both sides of the Atlantic—even if Hoberman’s given name has been upgraded in French from J. to Jim. [3/31/09] Read more

Hi Jon,
The photo is mine, provided years ago to Alabama Public Television when they were shooting “Rosenbaum House in Alabama” and to Debbie Wilson, who runs the Florence tourism promotion office. PBS picked it up when they did their FLLW series in 1999. The photo (yes, it is chez Rosenbaum) has been on the web in reverse since October 13, 1999. As in this instance, you can sometimes check the provenance of a website through the Wayback Machine ( http://web.archive.org). I never bothered to write to correct the error of the left to right reversal.

Love,
Alvin

P.S. A much better item on the PBS website is FLW’s rendering of the house. Find it at http://web.archive.org/web/20041229231416/www.pbs.org/flw/buildings/usonia/usonia.html
A

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Thanks to a post by Tom Brueggemann yesterday on Dave Kehr’s web site, I’ve just discovered the existence of a remarkable site cataloging almost 23,000 movie theaters around the world, including all nine of those in northwestern Alabama that were owned and/or operated by my grandfather between roughly 1919 and 1960, only a couple of which are still standing today (neither of which still shows movies). There’s also quite a lot of factual information about these theaters available on this site.

Cinema Treasures also features almost 1600 photographs of theaters, though, alas, not any of the nine run by my grandfather. It seems that the people in charge of this site got inundated with more photos of theaters than they could cope with, so they’re not currently adding any more, at least for the time being. But since a good many photos of my family’s former theaters are available in my first book, Moving Places: A Life at the Movies (1980), I’ve decided to reproduce a few here, restricting myself to exterior views of four of them. Directly overhead are the two that are still standing—the Shoals in Florence (which opened in 1948, and is seen here just after it opened) and the Ritz in Sheffield (which opened in 1928). Read more